2) JLG is a big part of the history of computing. He's a brilliant guy with a well rounded and balanced view of the future of technology.
But if Gil Amelio picked Be instead of NeXT in 1996, our timeline of the last 19 years would be very different for Apple, the world, and Steve Jobs. JLG might be "brilliant" but he's no Steve Jobs, not by a light year.
So a 10 year average of 10%. Is that enough for Apple? How much is Porsche's revenue (or profit) in that time frame? Can Apple compete with Porsche on that efficiency out of the gate?
Porsche's operating margin is 16%, not 10%. But that's still substantially lower than Apple's current 30%.
However, no one would have believed ten years ago that Apple could be producing 30% operating margins on cellphones and yet sell 200 million of them a year. Or, even more unlikely, PCs at that kind of a margin. Yet, they're doing this, comfortably year after year.
Apple has repeatedly changed the economics of the businesses it has got into. Looking at current margins of competitors can only get us so far in modeling the valuation of a company like Apple.
I don't know what the economics (and margins) of an IC engine are compared to a battery-operated engine. I am thinking the market thinks it must be substantially better, given Tesla's valuation.
Perhaps you know the economics better than I do. Or that blogger you linked to.
they are doing research. doesn't equal that they will make a car. They might end up using the findings for something else. better car play, creating systems to do what the Automatic does but without the needed add on. Who knows at this point
1) I thought I read about 10 paragraphs down that Porsche had average a 10% profit margin over the last ten years.
2) Regardless of what the profit margin is, it's only relevant in terms of moving the needle on Apple if the revenue had from the car sales is high enough to make 10% (or 16%) worthwhile to Apple's longterm goals. There are potentially areas where the mark up is so high Apple could make a 100%, but why would they if the revenue generated is only, say, $1 million per year, or $500,000 profit. I doubt Apple wouldn't mind a lower profit margin if the revenue was high enough to warrant it.
Whether this project results in a car or something else it's a way to recruit new talent and keep good talent around. I would imagine that things like making an iPad 18% thinner become boring at some point.
Cool concept but Apple has always been about customers owning the hardware for the best and most personal experience. An Apple Uber-like service would indicate an entire business model shift towards iCloud away from iPhone for example.
That was originally Apple's modus operandi, but in the iOS era they are all about making every cent they can. They even run their own retail network to make the money that for normal manufacturers is made by distribution, transport and retail chains. By not selling the vehicles directly, they will be able to maximise their profit margin per vehicle as they will need to make far fewer of them and they would be earning Apple money almost all the time they were in motion, whereas most privately owned cars are sitting still for most of their existence. Commercial vehicles make money for their owners.
It all depends on the feasibility of making them truly autonomous of course. If that proves impossible, well then privately owned cars are the only option and Apple would end up with far lower margins than they are used to if they did decide to enter the product category.
Whether this project results in a car or something else it's a way to recruit new talent and keep good talent around. I would imagine that things like making an iPad 18% thinner become boring at some point.
A great way for Apple to test the self driving car - ? Auto - is to use it into their own warehouses. It is going to give them a lot of knowledge and save them money if implemented well.
Someone told me Amazon is already replacing humans with Autos in their gigantic warehouses. It does make sense to me as some of their employees are doing half marathons during a day's work.
Anyway, all this to say that we are at the advent of a great mobility revolution with new players like Google, Tesla and Über. Autos - self driving cars if you like - are going to replace the traditional cars with steering wheel and pedals. I can see Apple leading the way as most of today's cars are just plain juvenile - especially the sports cars - and ugly (interior, dashboard and exterior).
[quote]When Eddie Cue demoed “iOS in the Car” back at WWDC in 2013, it seemed a bit half-baked. As he zipped through maps, messages and music, I was waiting for a wow moment that never came. By working with existing manufacturers, Apple was constricted by the screens and systems in place. iOS in the Car certainly looked better than any in-dash entertainment I had seen before—especially the one that’s in my Hyundai Veloster—but it didn’t really bring anything new to the table. It was like putting lipstick on a Siri-powered pig.
It’s the same problem I had with the Motorola ROKR. Dubbed the Apple iTunes phone, it was supposed to bring a bit of the iPod ingenuity to our handsets, but in reality it merely created a bridge to the music locked on our Macs. The interface was a cheap imitation of the iPod’s intuitive menu structure, and it was wrapped in a substandard package that tried to imagine what an Apple phone would look like. Basically, Apple was at Motorola’s mercy, because no matter how good the iTunes app was, it was only part of the experience. And that’s not how Apple operates.
With cars, Apple has even less control. Not only does CarPlay need to span a broad spectrum of manufacturers, it also has to be designed with an interface generic enough to work with both touch- and dial-controlled systems. It’s a less-than-desirable solution, but there’s no other way for Apple to make a true push into automobiles—just like it needed Motorola in 2005 to get its foot into the door of the cell phone industry.[/quote]
So far I have read 4 different assumptions with this news.
Completely false rumor
Apple is trying to make CarPlay (or its successor) better.
Apple wants to control the entire dashboard
Apple is making their own car
It seems unlikely it's completely false, and the arguments for their minivans having gear more inline with self-driving cars over LidAR-based street-level mapping have won me over. So…
Can Apple make a self-driving car without building their own car?
Would it behoove Apple to get control of the dashboard and other "computers" on-board without directly competing with the major car makers?
Could a threat of competing directly against help make the car makers more agreeable to working with Apple?
The chances of Apple coming out with a self-driving car are no better than Google. The require infrastructured just isn't there. What might however happen is that Silicon Valley might be the only place in the world where self-driving cars become common place.
We're not yet at the forefront of technology for this to happen. A lot of technology still needs to catch up:
- GPS technology is not yet accurate enough, and doesn't know the street geography
- LIDAR based technology requires large data for the street geography, so effectively needs a 3D map before it can be driven into a new place.
- Wireless Internet broadband requirements have yet to be met outside some "test markets". Sure I can get 75Mbit down/up... if I'm 200ft from the cellular antenna mast. That's absolutely useless 5 miles outside any major city.
- AI technology needs to improve in conventional vehicles still. For example, rail technology like Thales Seltrac, allows completely automated rail networks to exist. There is no reason why this can't be applied to car navigation networks. Have all the cars connect wirelessly to a standardized traffic control network zone as they get near (like cellular technology), and have the cars be smart enough to operate without the control network and actually communicate with surrounding vehicles to know how fast it's going and where there's obstructions. If someone panics and hits the brakes in a car, all the automated cars should stop instantly, and not hesitate.
- Weather.
Weather is probably the largest stumbling block, and most cars will still have to be driven manually if the roads are covered with snow as this screws up any camera/LIDAR based assistance.
Is it possible for a company to become self-endowed? That is, to amass so much cash in the bank, that just the income on that pile woul be enough to pay operating yearly operating expenses? How much would it take, and/or how small would Apple have to become in order to be self-sustaining? Thought experiment.
Their operating costs are around $18b including $6b R&D. They made $1.7b in interest on their cash so just over 1%. To pay operating expenses on just interest, they'd need cash of about $1.8t. It would be very difficult to maintain that let alone grow it with interest. The cash they keep mainly acts as a reserve. $100b would give them just over a 5 year reserve so that's good to maintain. Income beyond a reasonable reserve can be returned to shareholders.
Maybe they've been building up the huge cash reserves to pull something like this off. The reason Tesla had such a slow start is they didn't have the capital. Elon Musk made about $180m from Paypal but nearly went broke financing Tesla and SpaceX, they were 1 quarter away from bankruptcy. NASA gave SpaceX a $1.6b contract and investors put money into Tesla.
GM puts out under 10m cars per year and the cost of sales is $138b. This makes sense considering the average car price is $30,000 so 10m cars would be around $300b retail.
Apple has enough cash to rival the biggest car manufacturers in the world in volume for 1 year without making any sales. If they aimed for a $20-40k retail price, to produce 1m units would cost under $30b.
To get a huge head start, they could have bought Fisker. It was bought by a Chinese autoparts maker for $150m. I thought Tesla's cars were cool until I saw the Fisker:
Henrik Fisker designed some BMW and Aston Martin models. The Fisker looks a bit like the Aston Martin Vanquish:
The great thing with electric cars is they can look cool like that and still fit the whole family in because the engine takes up so little space. The battery takes up space but this will get smaller over time. Within 100 years, the batteries that can cover the entire base of the car like the Tesla one can be the size of laptop batteries:
You'd have two or more and spares can be charged at home or purchased in stores. Replaceable batteries will happen long before this though. There can be an apparatus to drop the battery out the bottom onto a trolley and switch it out for another.
Apple just needs to make sure and keep Marc Newson away from it so it doesn't end up like this:
Apple would improve other areas too like window wipers. Instead they'd have something like a pipe cleaner brush horizontally across the window that moved up and down the whole surface of the window. With a metal wire inside, it can be heated to remove ice from the whole window too. This can have a very small form factor if they use wire pulleys to move it on each side. If they have low friction glass maybe via a coating, that would help prevent things sticking to the glass in the first place. If they could come up with a dynamic paint system too, that would be nice. You'd be able to change the car color digitally. Breast Cancer day, make it pink etc.
Seat belts and air bags are so old-fashioned too. What they really need is way to fill the car with high density foam:
[VIDEO]
Like packing foam or something so that every part of the body is slowed down from movement. At the very least fix the seatbelts so they don't jam if you tug on them too hard.
Airless tyres is something it should have too like these:
but with sealing rubber on the outside so that branches and things don't get caught up in them.
Mirrors need to go too in place of cameras. There will be regulation with this but I wonder if there would be a way to focus light from a lens at the back of the car and just push it down an optical fiber and then expand it at the front so there's no electronics involved, like a periscope but smaller and horizontal.
No doors that open outwards either and have a safety mechanism for trapped fingers. They could be like collapsible doors split in 1/3rds where each part slides inside the next like in elevator doors:
Apple has a long history of going after high volume and high profit margin areas. A successful ?Car a decade from now would likely only succeed in Apple getting a much higher revenue, with a much lower profit margin across the board… even if the ?Car is the most sought after and most efficient automobile on the market to produce thereby generating a much higher profit margin than is typical from automobile makers.
To me, it seems like it's better if Apple does essentially what MS does with Android. That being MS is probably the biggest profiteer from Android OS because of patents and licensing, while most Android OEMs struggle to compete. If Apple could make hundreds of dollars for every pretty much car that is made without having to invest in making a complete car and all the costs associated with it, they cold increase potentially increase their revenue, profits, -and- profit margins. But will they let them in?
I'd agree if it were simply not in Apple's DNA not to control almost every stage of a products creation, even if they sub out some parts manufacturing. The end products, since the clone debacle, are always 100% Apple and sold by Apple. Car Play I guess is the rare exception and iWork for PCs on the internet.
One thing I have not seen mentioned thus far by anyone relating to the ?Car rumors is 3D printing. I wonder if Apple might not have some new mass production plan for an electric car that would make Henry Ford's mind boggle and have production costs low enough to retain that 38% profit Apple so often achieve?
Maybe Apple is working on a driverless NASCAR car. Driverless cars would allow for the "sport" to take elements from demolition derby and the chariot race in Ben Hur. If they do that, I may start watching it.
Marvin: Thank you for taking the time fill in the blanks on my rumination. I was afraid my idea might be way beyond reality. Thanks also oftheir interesting ideas on automotive progress.
Apple would improve other areas too like window wipers. Instead they'd have something like a pipe cleaner brush horizontally across the window that moved up and down the whole surface of the window. With a metal wire inside, it can be heated to remove ice from the whole window too. This can have a very small form factor if they use wire pulleys to move it on each side. If they have low friction glass maybe via a coating, that would help prevent things sticking to the glass in the first place.
I have considered windshield wipers such as you have described but ultimately dismissed the idea because I believe it would be impossible for that sort of design to handle the super fast setting needed for heavy downpours. In the tropics we get rain so hard even the current wiper design cannot keep up. I can't imagine a design such as what you have described even capable of anything other than a slight drizzle.
Originally Posted by Marvin
Airless tyres is something it should have too like these:
I have seen that design but doubt it will ever be an adequate replacement for the standard tire. Way too fragile. Might work okay in your driveway but as soon as you get out on the road, or worse, a dirt road, mud or snow it would be all over in a hurry.
The European Galileo GPS will have the necessary accuracy - down to a few cm.
That's a good point; it's much more accurate than GPS and GLONASS. But this level of accuracy isn't a free service, and without knowing the subscription cost it's a hard sell. It is actually the first 2-way communication GPS:
It would make sense. The financial opportunity is there but more importantly the opportunity to impact something like this to improve how we live our lives is too irresistible for Apple...
I get what you're saying and I know you're not the only one that shares that sentiment but I guess in many cases it depends on what type of vehicle you have. If you own a stable of cars like Jony Ive or Phil Schiller have, then driving may not be as much of a chore.
It doesn't matter about the type of the vehicle.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">I've owned a Mercedes-Benz in the past and I currently own a Toyota by choice.</span>
What's better? Sitting in the back seat of a Toyota reading the Wall Street Journal or driving a Mercedes-Benz? Personally, I'd rather sit in the Toyota's back seat. I'd be focused on the Wall Street Journal anyhow.
Fancy cars are a status symbol, like jewelry.
I get carsick if I read in cars, so no benefit to not driving for me.
Also, define productivity. If you drive, you get time to think and reflect. That's productive time in my books.
Comments
And most companies would love to $1,000,000 I profit every quarter, but that would be disastrous for Apple.
But if Gil Amelio picked Be instead of NeXT in 1996, our timeline of the last 19 years would be very different for Apple, the world, and Steve Jobs. JLG might be "brilliant" but he's no Steve Jobs, not by a light year.
So a 10 year average of 10%. Is that enough for Apple? How much is Porsche's revenue (or profit) in that time frame? Can Apple compete with Porsche on that efficiency out of the gate?
Porsche's operating margin is 16%, not 10%. But that's still substantially lower than Apple's current 30%.
However, no one would have believed ten years ago that Apple could be producing 30% operating margins on cellphones and yet sell 200 million of them a year. Or, even more unlikely, PCs at that kind of a margin. Yet, they're doing this, comfortably year after year.
Apple has repeatedly changed the economics of the businesses it has got into. Looking at current margins of competitors can only get us so far in modeling the valuation of a company like Apple.
I don't know what the economics (and margins) of an IC engine are compared to a battery-operated engine. I am thinking the market thinks it must be substantially better, given Tesla's valuation.
Perhaps you know the economics better than I do. Or that blogger you linked to.
they are doing research. doesn't equal that they will make a car. They might end up using the findings for something else. better car play, creating systems to do what the Automatic does but without the needed add on. Who knows at this point
1) I thought I read about 10 paragraphs down that Porsche had average a 10% profit margin over the last ten years.
2) Regardless of what the profit margin is, it's only relevant in terms of moving the needle on Apple if the revenue had from the car sales is high enough to make 10% (or 16%) worthwhile to Apple's longterm goals. There are potentially areas where the mark up is so high Apple could make a 100%, but why would they if the revenue generated is only, say, $1 million per year, or $500,000 profit. I doubt Apple wouldn't mind a lower profit margin if the revenue was high enough to warrant it.
Cool concept but Apple has always been about customers owning the hardware for the best and most personal experience. An Apple Uber-like service would indicate an entire business model shift towards iCloud away from iPhone for example.
That was originally Apple's modus operandi, but in the iOS era they are all about making every cent they can. They even run their own retail network to make the money that for normal manufacturers is made by distribution, transport and retail chains. By not selling the vehicles directly, they will be able to maximise their profit margin per vehicle as they will need to make far fewer of them and they would be earning Apple money almost all the time they were in motion, whereas most privately owned cars are sitting still for most of their existence. Commercial vehicles make money for their owners.
It all depends on the feasibility of making them truly autonomous of course. If that proves impossible, well then privately owned cars are the only option and Apple would end up with far lower margins than they are used to if they did decide to enter the product category.
Whether this project results in a car or something else it's a way to recruit new talent and keep good talent around. I would imagine that things like making an iPad 18% thinner become boring at some point.
A great way for Apple to test the self driving car - ? Auto - is to use it into their own warehouses. It is going to give them a lot of knowledge and save them money if implemented well.
Someone told me Amazon is already replacing humans with Autos in their gigantic warehouses. It does make sense to me as some of their employees are doing half marathons during a day's work.
Anyway, all this to say that we are at the advent of a great mobility revolution with new players like Google, Tesla and Über. Autos - self driving cars if you like - are going to replace the traditional cars with steering wheel and pedals. I can see Apple leading the way as most of today's cars are just plain juvenile - especially the sports cars - and ugly (interior, dashboard and exterior).
http://www.macworld.com/article/2884654/a-car-could-be-the-final-piece-of-apples-puzzle.html
[quote]When Eddie Cue demoed “iOS in the Car” back at WWDC in 2013, it seemed a bit half-baked. As he zipped through maps, messages and music, I was waiting for a wow moment that never came. By working with existing manufacturers, Apple was constricted by the screens and systems in place. iOS in the Car certainly looked better than any in-dash entertainment I had seen before—especially the one that’s in my Hyundai Veloster—but it didn’t really bring anything new to the table. It was like putting lipstick on a Siri-powered pig.
It’s the same problem I had with the Motorola ROKR. Dubbed the Apple iTunes phone, it was supposed to bring a bit of the iPod ingenuity to our handsets, but in reality it merely created a bridge to the music locked on our Macs. The interface was a cheap imitation of the iPod’s intuitive menu structure, and it was wrapped in a substandard package that tried to imagine what an Apple phone would look like. Basically, Apple was at Motorola’s mercy, because no matter how good the iTunes app was, it was only part of the experience. And that’s not how Apple operates.
With cars, Apple has even less control. Not only does CarPlay need to span a broad spectrum of manufacturers, it also has to be designed with an interface generic enough to work with both touch- and dial-controlled systems. It’s a less-than-desirable solution, but there’s no other way for Apple to make a true push into automobiles—just like it needed Motorola in 2005 to get its foot into the door of the cell phone industry.[/quote]
The chances of Apple coming out with a self-driving car are no better than Google. The require infrastructured just isn't there. What might however happen is that Silicon Valley might be the only place in the world where self-driving cars become common place.
We're not yet at the forefront of technology for this to happen. A lot of technology still needs to catch up:
- GPS technology is not yet accurate enough, and doesn't know the street geography
- LIDAR based technology requires large data for the street geography, so effectively needs a 3D map before it can be driven into a new place.
- Wireless Internet broadband requirements have yet to be met outside some "test markets". Sure I can get 75Mbit down/up... if I'm 200ft from the cellular antenna mast. That's absolutely useless 5 miles outside any major city.
- AI technology needs to improve in conventional vehicles still. For example, rail technology like Thales Seltrac, allows completely automated rail networks to exist. There is no reason why this can't be applied to car navigation networks. Have all the cars connect wirelessly to a standardized traffic control network zone as they get near (like cellular technology), and have the cars be smart enough to operate without the control network and actually communicate with surrounding vehicles to know how fast it's going and where there's obstructions. If someone panics and hits the brakes in a car, all the automated cars should stop instantly, and not hesitate.
- Weather.
Weather is probably the largest stumbling block, and most cars will still have to be driven manually if the roads are covered with snow as this screws up any camera/LIDAR based assistance.
Civilian GPS indeed isn't. Military GPS is, however. But I do not think their tech will ever be released to the public, probably for public safety.
Their operating costs are around $18b including $6b R&D. They made $1.7b in interest on their cash so just over 1%. To pay operating expenses on just interest, they'd need cash of about $1.8t. It would be very difficult to maintain that let alone grow it with interest. The cash they keep mainly acts as a reserve. $100b would give them just over a 5 year reserve so that's good to maintain. Income beyond a reasonable reserve can be returned to shareholders.
Maybe they've been building up the huge cash reserves to pull something like this off. The reason Tesla had such a slow start is they didn't have the capital. Elon Musk made about $180m from Paypal but nearly went broke financing Tesla and SpaceX, they were 1 quarter away from bankruptcy. NASA gave SpaceX a $1.6b contract and investors put money into Tesla.
GM puts out under 10m cars per year and the cost of sales is $138b. This makes sense considering the average car price is $30,000 so 10m cars would be around $300b retail.
Apple has enough cash to rival the biggest car manufacturers in the world in volume for 1 year without making any sales. If they aimed for a $20-40k retail price, to produce 1m units would cost under $30b.
To get a huge head start, they could have bought Fisker. It was bought by a Chinese autoparts maker for $150m. I thought Tesla's cars were cool until I saw the Fisker:
http://thenewfisker.com
Henrik Fisker designed some BMW and Aston Martin models. The Fisker looks a bit like the Aston Martin Vanquish:
The great thing with electric cars is they can look cool like that and still fit the whole family in because the engine takes up so little space. The battery takes up space but this will get smaller over time. Within 100 years, the batteries that can cover the entire base of the car like the Tesla one can be the size of laptop batteries:
You'd have two or more and spares can be charged at home or purchased in stores. Replaceable batteries will happen long before this though. There can be an apparatus to drop the battery out the bottom onto a trolley and switch it out for another.
Apple just needs to make sure and keep Marc Newson away from it so it doesn't end up like this:
Apple would improve other areas too like window wipers. Instead they'd have something like a pipe cleaner brush horizontally across the window that moved up and down the whole surface of the window. With a metal wire inside, it can be heated to remove ice from the whole window too. This can have a very small form factor if they use wire pulleys to move it on each side. If they have low friction glass maybe via a coating, that would help prevent things sticking to the glass in the first place. If they could come up with a dynamic paint system too, that would be nice. You'd be able to change the car color digitally. Breast Cancer day, make it pink etc.
Seat belts and air bags are so old-fashioned too. What they really need is way to fill the car with high density foam:
[VIDEO]
Like packing foam or something so that every part of the body is slowed down from movement. At the very least fix the seatbelts so they don't jam if you tug on them too hard.
Airless tyres is something it should have too like these:
but with sealing rubber on the outside so that branches and things don't get caught up in them.
Mirrors need to go too in place of cameras. There will be regulation with this but I wonder if there would be a way to focus light from a lens at the back of the car and just push it down an optical fiber and then expand it at the front so there's no electronics involved, like a periscope but smaller and horizontal.
No doors that open outwards either and have a safety mechanism for trapped fingers. They could be like collapsible doors split in 1/3rds where each part slides inside the next like in elevator doors:
I'd agree if it were simply not in Apple's DNA not to control almost every stage of a products creation, even if they sub out some parts manufacturing. The end products, since the clone debacle, are always 100% Apple and sold by Apple. Car Play I guess is the rare exception and iWork for PCs on the internet.
One thing I have not seen mentioned thus far by anyone relating to the ?Car rumors is 3D printing. I wonder if Apple might not have some new mass production plan for an electric car that would make Henry Ford's mind boggle and have production costs low enough to retain that 38% profit Apple so often achieve?
Maybe Apple is working on a driverless NASCAR car. Driverless cars would allow for the "sport" to take elements from demolition derby and the chariot race in Ben Hur. If they do that, I may start watching it.
Civilian GPS indeed isn't. Military GPS is, however. But I do not think their tech will ever be released to the public, probably for public safety.
The European Galileo GPS will have the necessary accuracy - down to a few cm.
Apple would improve other areas too like window wipers. Instead they'd have something like a pipe cleaner brush horizontally across the window that moved up and down the whole surface of the window. With a metal wire inside, it can be heated to remove ice from the whole window too. This can have a very small form factor if they use wire pulleys to move it on each side. If they have low friction glass maybe via a coating, that would help prevent things sticking to the glass in the first place.
I have considered windshield wipers such as you have described but ultimately dismissed the idea because I believe it would be impossible for that sort of design to handle the super fast setting needed for heavy downpours. In the tropics we get rain so hard even the current wiper design cannot keep up. I can't imagine a design such as what you have described even capable of anything other than a slight drizzle.
Airless tyres is something it should have too like these:
I have seen that design but doubt it will ever be an adequate replacement for the standard tire. Way too fragile. Might work okay in your driveway but as soon as you get out on the road, or worse, a dirt road, mud or snow it would be all over in a hurry.
?
That's a good point; it's much more accurate than GPS and GLONASS. But this level of accuracy isn't a free service, and without knowing the subscription cost it's a hard sell. It is actually the first 2-way communication GPS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)
I get carsick if I read in cars, so no benefit to not driving for me.
Also, define productivity. If you drive, you get time to think and reflect. That's productive time in my books.